Improving access to social care for adults with autism

Underpinning research: the University of Sussex Practice Enquiry

Imogen Taylor and Tish Marrable
University of Sussex
January 2011

This practice enquiry, which ran from December 2009 to July 2010, was the third strand of a SCIE project sponsored by the Department of Health (DH), in order to inform and support their strategy for adults with ASC. The key question that led to the practice enquiry was:

How far [do] current services and strategies support or hinder people with ASC to live independently and to what extent [do] current processes exclude people with ASC by denying social care support to enable them to access services and mainstream provision? (Commissioning Brief, September 2009)

The evaluation sought to:

invite and consider a range of views about the provision of services to support independent living for adults with ASC, from people with ASC receiving services, those who have had difficulty accessing support, their carers and other stakeholders

identify views on issues of access to assessment processes

identify views on what assessments achieve for people with ASC and their carers and on provision of service

identify the policy and practice challenges which may affect access to support and experience of provision of services

identify areas of 'good practice' as perceived by people who use services and carers and other stakeholders in access to and experience of provision of services

provide recommendations that may inform future good practice in the provision of services for adults with ASC.

The methods included:

two online surveys: aimed at adults with ASC and carers, hosted by NAS, and designed to gather quantitative and qualitative data

survey follow-up: where participants agreed, the online surveys were followed up in more depth via email or telephone, depending on the participant's preference

service provider questionnaires: issued to track the names of the service providers that respondents had given to the online surveys and others

participation group involvement: NAS put a set of questions to two of their participation groups for people with ASC and higher levels of communication need

three sitesprovided qualitative data from face-to-face interviews with people with ASC, carers and service providers in rural and urban areas of England.